First Look: Jaeger – Essential Modern Orchestra by Audio Imperia

by db

Just a few hours in and I am loving Jaeger. Full of energy and expression, the Strings have that special ‘air’ and Brass has plenty of bite and growl, all adding life to your tracks. I think Jaeger just might become my go-to for trailer projects and anything requiring bold and energetic orchestra.

Audio Imperia are best known for their epic sample libraries and production tools for sound design and trailer composer. I have been a big fan of thier work since early reviews on SLR and that is why I was thrilled to see the developer was looking to stretch their wings and venture into creating an orchestral library especially designed for it’s core users.

When Audio Imperia begin working on JAEGER, they had two simple goals in mind. One, delivers an incredible sound straight out of the box. And two, create a user-friendly engine and interface. On both counts, the developer has succeeded. The instruments all sound fantastic with an incredible amount of stereo depth and bite that will add life and excitement. All housed in an interface that benefit from Audio Imperia’s constant dedications to updates improvements.

In the first look video posted above, I took a couple hours to get to know the instrument and craft the beginnings of a track to share as well as play-through a good number of the articulations that the entire package has to offer.

Being a first look, there were a few details I did not cover (see the official videos at the bottom of the page for full functionality information) and please note that I missed sharing the sounds of the Merethe Soltvedt Vocal nki’s Riser and included Phrases.

Also of note is that at the time of posting Jaeger was on a special introductory sales offer available at $549 (reg $599) with discount code “Intro-Jaeger” at check out. The intro offer is available until February 9th, 2018.

More Thoughts and Details

JAEGER Main Instrument Interface

Jaeger’s main interface makes for easy navigation. Keyswitches are set up at the lower end of the keyboard for articulation switching but can be moved as the user desires with an easy drag across the ‘keys’ icon located above the first articulation graphic and the ability to lock articulations placement with the ‘lock’ icon.

The main orchestral instruments come with 4 microphone positions: Spot, Tree, Wide, Far, Full Mix. This gives users a lot of flexibility with sound but to be honest, I was really thrilled with the choice and duration of the default Full Mix option as it really shines for delivering great tone for all the instruments included.

Of note here is that True Legato articulations are limited to the Violins, Celli, Trumpets, Horns orchestral instruments. With the Vocal instrument containing Ahh, Ooh, Mmm legato articulations as well as phrases, upscale and breath effects. There was some rumor that Audio Imperia already has recording sessions in the works for adding and upgrading the library with more articulations, but I can’t confirm at this time.

Vocal KNI is limited to the included main microphone.

The sound design ‘Mech’ instruments fall squarely into the ‘Transformers’ sounding landscape, while the drones are delivered at very good lengths with a variety of textures and movement. If I was to be critical here I would say that the drones tend to be a little busy at times and I said the same of some of the Brahms hits and impacts included in the other sound design instrument.

Don’t get me wrong, all very usable and most delivered as more stripped down version in other patches, I just find that for my projects I more often than not need simple yet interesting and new hits and attacks.

Anyone familiar with Audio Imperia’s other sound design and trailer tools libraries will be familiar with the Step Mod FX which allow keyswitching on and off for Gating, Panning Low and Hi pass filters. These can be especially great to work with to add stutter to risers, increase tension and add space for Brahms or even add panning at quarter, eighth and sixteenth note interf=vals for add interest and etffect.

Jaeger Step Modulation controls.

The library also offers a number of send effects as well as some really nice sounding IRs, delay, compression and the other usual suspects.

Also familiar to those of us who have been using the developer’s other library is the “BIG KNOB”.

This an effects controller that allows for signal processing with a selection of effects (Compression Distortion, Lo-Fi, Rotator, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser) that can be slowly added to the overall sound of the signal with the turn of the BIG KNOB.

Just a few hours in and I am loving Jaeger. I think the sound has plenty of energy and expression. The Strings have that special ‘air’ to them that just breaths life into a piece and the Brass has plenty of bite and growl. I am going to be creating a Jaeger based template for my next couple projects and can see how these orchestral instruments could become the go-to for my trailer projects.

Facts

Also of note is that at the time of posting Jaeger was on a special introductory sales offer available at $549 (reg $599) with discount code “Intro-Jaeger” at check out. The intro offer is available until February 9th, 2018.

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